Archive
The complete Open Letters Monthly Archive.
Computers - search engines, interactive databases, digital archives - have the potential to change academic research in ways the previous twenty centuries couldn't have imagined. But are those changes improvements - or the end of expertise as we know it? Or both?
Read MoreNerdy teenager Peter Parker was bitten by a radioactive spider - and a super-franchise was born! As a new blockbuster Spider-Man movie hits the summer theaters, Justin Hickey takes us on a tour of the character's colorful - and often tortured - past!
Read MoreWhy do we play video games? And why do we RE-play them? And what the heck has Sigmund Freud got to do with any of it? Gaming guru Phillip Lobo looks at some new iterations of familiar old games and attempts to connect the dots.
Read MoreAs Ridley Scott's "Prometheus" takes movie-goers back to the world of his "Alien" classics, we take a look at the long and lively history of modern cinema's most famous monsters.
Read MoreHis teenage years were blissfully misspent playing Diablo II from Blizzard, and now the company has come out with Diablo III - but can the relationship be saved?
Read MoreIntertwining through Boston history: the rich, implacable music of Beethoven and the flinty austerity of the Boston Granite style of architecture - trace the connections, as American Aristocracy continues.
Read MoreIn the latest version of the hugely popular video game - as in real life - you are the living culmination of all your past decisions, good and bad.
Read MoreThis month sees the arrival of the long-awaited $250 million dollar Hollywood movie adaptation of Marvel Comics' Avengers. Lost in all the hype is the rich history of the comic itself; Justin Hickey explores the convergence of pulp and pixels.
Read MoreAn interview with The Baffler's new Editor-in-Chief, John Summers.
Read MoreThe Baffler, an unapologetically radical journal that always punched above its weight, has had a troubled history. But a long-term publishing contract has rejuvenated it, and shown that an old formula is as relevant as ever.
Read MoreWhen the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded in 2010, it was given to an empty chair. Its recipient, Liu Xiaobo, was in prison for advocating human rights in China. Though he is still incarcerated, a collection of essays sheds light on his thought and struggle.
Read MoreTo the quintessential virtues the Puritans lent to a fledgling republic - globality, philantropy, and autonomy - the 'speaking aristocracy' of the Boston Brahmins added one more: the love of learning
Read MoreLong-time critic John Sutherland's latest book The Lives of the Novelists takes readers on a biographical tour of 294 creators' lives. But does it work? Long-time critic Steve Donoghue and novelist John Cotter try to figure that out.
Read MoreSteve Jobs, the visionary predator who founded Apple and forged a new way of thinking about technology, wasn't a particularly nice man (as even his dutiful biographer must occasionally concede) - but was he a genius?
Read MoreUnlike the soap operas with which it is often dismissively aligned, Downton Abbey is defined by change rather than stasis - by its beautifully produced attention to social evolution.
Read More"Spending a summer night alone in Hannibal, watching the Mississippi River, staying in a rundown motel, and getting drunk by yourself ... that's a solid way to spend a day." -- A conversation with poet and cover artist Joshua Ware
Read MoreA simpler, sleeker update of the dystopian 90's classic Syndicate raises some uncomfortable questions about the here and now.
Read MoreWe live in an age of outrage, yet one of our most egregious 'blood sports' escapes censure from the press. Since long before Hemingway, writers have been calling bullfighting exotic instead of barbaric -- what are they thinking?
Read MoreHe fought a world war with France, survived the Black Death, and gave England a real Parliament. Froissart and Chaucer loved him, Shakespeare (almost) wrote about him, and the Victorians disparaged him. He was Edward III, and he has a king-sized new biography from Yale University Press.
Read More" Paper is a ubiquitous material but it also can be alarmingly elegant. It has religious (holy books, Joss paper) and socio-political (money, contracts), and quotidienne (butcher paper, toilet paper) connotations." -- a conversation with cover artist Megan Heeres
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